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Grading Trudeau on quantum computing
- Walkman 11y agoSomeone on FB speculated that it was a trick just for this video: > the person asking the question probably works for Trudeau and Trudeau had previously memorized the whole quantum explanation just for this video. and after reading an article about this claimed that: > Trudeau had actually learned the definition of quantum computing that very morning before this conference and admitted to the fact. Source: https://www.facebook.com/boeree.liv/posts/1092245874166258?comment_id=1092263554164490&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R9%22%7D https://www.facebook.com/boeree.liv/posts/1092245874166258?c...
- pj_mukh 11y agoHow dare he educate himself on the subject of his government's funding?! /s P.S: I didn't mean to be snarky. Any politician that educates himself to even appear smart , instead of trying come off as anti-intellectual "joe six-pack" or simply a spin master (see: Trudeau's predecessor) is progress to me.
- cthor 11y agoYou don't think him reciting a canned script made to give the impression of expertise and closing with "I could talk about this for ages..." is deceptive? He was talking like he was well-versed in the subject, when he had really just read some cliff notes.
- morgante 11y agoNobody could watch the clip and thing Trudeau is actually an expert in quantum computing. He was clearly joking about being able to talk about it for ages. He came across as an intelligent and funny politician who had made the effort to at least develop a modicum of understanding for something he's funding. Nothing more and nothing less.
- iamben 11y agoI didn't take the "I could talk about this for ages..." to mean he knew everything about it, merely that this is something he found interesting enough to talk (to people) about for ages.
- eli 11y agoIt was a joke.
- npunt 11y agoNever attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by humor.
- unavoidable 11y agoThe fact that he bothered to learn is somehow a bad thing?
- bcook 11y agoI guess I'm bothered by the fact that he implied that he was more than casually educated on the subject he was talking about...
- revscat 11y agoAs an American, where most of our politicians eagerly jostle for the title of Stupidest Human, the fact that the PM was trying to appear smart raises him up several notches. He considers intelligence to be something worthy. That's refreshing and admirable.
- bcook 11y agoHe is likely intelligent but he is very ignorant of the subject he speaks, which is where my concern lies.
- dnautics 11y agoAs an American I would be far more concerned about a leader who knows little and makes airs of knowing more than an intelligent leader who dumbs themself down... The latter has an outside shot at being wise; the former has an outside shot at being dangerous.
- TillE 11y agoThe conspiracy theory angle is immediately stupid if you bother to listen to the actual exchange, in which the reporter asks his real question (a fairly uncomfortable one for the PM) right after his joke. If it's a setup, you'd stop and let Trudeau respond to the joke.
- burke 11y agoI think what happened here was that he asked the press to ask him about quantum computing, then when this guy tried to jab him for that tactic, he spun it around and turned it back into something that worked out even better for him. Clearly it was rehearsed and staged, but like others said, I'm just impressed he made an effort to and was able to learn and regurgitate this information.
- BariumBlue 11y agoI thought it's pretty apparent he felt relatively confident going into the explanation, then got flustered and sped up as he got further into the explanation as he realised he didn't understand/couldn't explain it as well as he thought he could
- jszymborski 11y agoIf this is true, it's better to pretend to know about Quantum Computing than to pretend evolution isn't a thing...
- bsbechtel 11y agoTo play devil's advocate, pretending to know about Quantum Computing, or any highly technical subject, when applying for a job is extremely misleading. This isn't too different.
- jszymborski 11y agoThis is politics. The point here is that Trudeau can't pretend to know about QC and then make huge cuts to science without it being terrible optics. It's easier to go with a Palin/Trump stance of "science is sometimes right, but often wrong, especially when it's inconveniently opposed to my policy" when you plan to defund science. After the last Canadian PM took a hatchet to non-energy sector science funding, this and other recent trips to science centres like the McGill Neurological Institute, is about bridge building with the Canadian public.
- msbarnett 11y ago> Someone on FB speculated that it was a trick just for this video: > > the person asking the question probably works for Trudeau and Trudeau had previously memorized the whole quantum explanation just for this video. The question was asked by a pool reporter from The Canadian Press (that's not a generic description, it's the name of a private news organization). > and after reading an article about this claimed that: > > Trudeau had actually learned the definition of quantum computing that very morning before this conference and admitted to the fact. He said he was excited he had had a chance to learn more about quantum computing that morning while touring a quantum computing research institute to announce $50 million in funding for quantum computing. How dare he display a modicum of intellectual curiosity and learn enough about the topic to explain it to a fellow layman along the way /s This is a rather silly conspiracy theory.
- daveFNbuck 11y agoThe problem is that he didn't learn enough to explain it to a fellow layman. He gave the impression that quantum computing is about storing more complicated bits so you can make a smaller computer.
- empath75 11y agoI don't think most working physicists could explain it properly to a layman.
- k-mcgrady 11y agoYour source seems to be a random Facebook comment who quotes a source but does not link to it. Any actual evidence?
- bparsons 11y agoThe person asking the question is a reporter for the Canadian Press.
- rectang 11y agoEven if Trudeau learned the definition the morning of, it speaks well of his background in engineering and math that he was able to assimilate such information and reformulate it coherently. Presenting a technical subject at just the right level of sophistication for a given audience is an invigorating intellectual exercise.
- JamilD 11y ago> Presenting a technical subject at just the right level of sophistication for a given audience I don't think the limiting factor here was the intelligence of the audience, given that he was presenting at the Perimeter Institute. That being said, I agree completely on your first point, and it's incredibly refreshing to see a politician make an effort to learn about a technical subject.
- morgante 11y ago> I don't think the limiting factor here was the intelligence of the audience, given that he was presenting at the Perimeter Institute. As the PM, his audience is always far larger than those in the immediate vicinity. Not to mention the gaggle of non-technical journalists who were there.
- James001 11y agoJesus... I was hoping atleast HN wouldn't give Trudeau a press blowjob. I'm from Canada and he is the most incompetent PM we've ever had. If you want to know what the future has for Canada with him as PM, look no further than the most indebted sub-sovereign in the world: Ontario. These guys are corrupt as fuck
- tn13 11y agoHonestly I would not be very surprised if Mr. Trudeau's PR team pulled it off.
- wrong_variable 11y agoDamn, the Canadians must be so proud to have such an awesome leader. video link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZBLSjF56S8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZBLSjF56S8
- sn41 11y agoYes, this is a great achievement. But there are precedents - the Singapore PM is a Senior Wrangler [1], a former Indian president was a rocket scientist [2] - oh, and some nasty fellow in the middle east was an ophthalmologist in London [3], lest we forget. I believe technical competence is uncorrelated to adminisitrative effectiveness. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Hsien_Loong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Hsien_Loong [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._P._J._Abdul_Kalam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._P._J._Abdul_Kalam [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assad
- morgante 11y ago> I believe technical competence is uncorrelated to adminisitrative effectiveness. I don't. Many Asian nations (including Singapore, China, etc.) are largely governed by engineering majors and I do believe this has been helpful for improving administrative effectiveness. This stands in stark contrast to countries where governance is dominated by either lawyers (the US) or military members (many other developing nations).
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoOr career-track politicians. (The UK.) Law and politics warp your view of the world because everything becomes a subjective, debatable matter of opinion. Politics is especially dangerous because the definition of a successful argument is one that increases your power. Facts are tangential at best, distracting and unwelcome at worst. The corresponding problem for people with STEM backgrounds is a lack of understanding that this is how politics works. If your approach is based on facts, model-building, and reality testing, it's incredibly easy to be blindsided by a career politician - or career manager - who only cares about public opinion, and is perfectly prepared to lie professionally if they make more money and/or gain more power from it.
- tosseraccount 11y agoIt seems like we know the Prime Minister's position on this but we just can't tell how he's moving on it.
- afrancis 11y agoWell the Trudeau government just earmarked 50 million for five years to the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
- criley2 11y agoI think he's making a joke about a "quantum politician" :)
- msbarnett 11y agoThis was at a press conference at the Perimiter Institute to announce $50 million in funding for Quantum Information projects Edit: in defence of completely missing the joke, I can only offer that I haven't had coffee yet today
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoRemember Obama and the bubble sort?
- JamilD 11y agoFrom the article: > One could also compare against Obama’s 2008 answer about bubblesort, which was just a mention of a keyword by comparison.
- stevehiehn 11y agoI think the take-away here is not what so much what PM Trudeau knows or doesn't know about quantum computing. It reveals how low our expectations are of our leaders.
- dboreham 11y agoI don't know for sure, but I think it is reasonable to assume Jimmy Carter knows a fair bit about quantum mechanics.
- cmrdporcupine 11y agoAnd is thus reviled in retrospect by the US public for being too smart.
- dnautics 11y agoCarter isn't generally reviled for being too smart. The number one thing that he's reviled for (maybe unfairly) is planning and botching a hostage rescue attempt that turned out to be pointless later when the hostages were freed by their captors.
- pilom 11y agoIn the West he's also disliked for being viewed as being anti-dam building during the biggest dam building spree in history.
- justin66 11y ago> The number one thing that he's reviled for (maybe unfairly) is planning and botching a hostage rescue attempt that turned out to be pointless later when the hostages were freed by their captors. Strictly speaking, I think he was reviled because the rescue attempt came late and didn't work. He made a joke within the last year - when announcing his cancer diagnosis, I think - about how he'd have been reelected if he had sent a few more helicopters on that mission, and that that would have been a mixed blessing for him personally. Both points were true, I think. (no idea why you were downvoted)
- martythemaniak 11y agoTrudeau did complete two years of engineering at a decent school and worked as a math teacher. While we don't know if he was prepped or regurgitated a paragraph, he probably has the faculties and interest to have a general understanding of what he was talking about. Oftentimes it's easier to actually learn something than to cheat convincingly.
- canistr 11y agoI can't seem to find much information with regards to his time studying engineering at Montreal. One article (albeit, the Toronto Sun so take it with a grain of salt) claims he dropped out. And I can't find anything that mentions what type of engineering he studied. It does seem a bit strange to go from studying English Literature, to becoming a teacher, to suddenly studying engineering before switching to environmental geography.
- rybosome 11y agoIs that strange? I switched from radiology to music composition to business to computer science.
- worldlinx 11y agoHe studied mechanical engineering at Polytechnique Montréal, which is on the same campus as Université de Montréal. He did not complete his degree and left to pursue a master in geography at McGill. [1] [1] Article is in french, sorry. http://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/politique/2012/10/01/002-biographie-justin-trudeau.shtml http://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/politique/2012/10/01/00...
- return0 11y agoI 've read this story in so many places. It's "good comedy", and I like the guy, but he used it to gain some popularity points (he seems to be good at that in general). I bet Angela Merkel could easily beat him in anything quantum, but what is the point? We should expect world leaders to have these abilities.
- danbruc 11y agoI think that story gets blown way out of proportion. If you picked random people on a street and asked them to integrate 4x³ from 0 to 2, you would maybe get somewhere between 1% and 10% correct answers, probably way closer to 1%. Still this is something that maybe half of the people once learned how to do in school, they just forget it because they don't need it in everyday life. But spend an hour or two and you can certainly teach them once again how to do it. And most of them will of course also forget it again pretty soon. Along the same line it shouldn't be to hard to give someone a rough idea of the difference between classical and quantum mechanics, notwithstanding that most people will pretty soon only have faint memories.
- khnd 11y agoi think "half the people" is an overestimate. i don't think most people learn integration in school. i'd be surprised if half learn differential calculus.
- danbruc 11y agoThis is probably pretty country specific, I just looked up which proportion of people in Germany reaches the qualification to enter university, about 50%, and calculus is mandatory on that way, differential and integral. But I ignored that this proportion increased over time, it was only 22% in 1980. So let's call it a quarter of the population or make the differentiate or explain something about plate tectonics.
- amelius 11y agoI'm wondering if massive bacterial computation will beat quantum computing on tasks like factorizing large integers. https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2009/jul/24/bacteria-computer https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2009/jul/24/bacteri...
- marcosdumay 11y agoOnly if nobody ever builds any big quantum computer, or if factoring turns out to be polynomial. If current understanding holds, no, bacteria has no standing chance.
- weinzierl 11y agoNo, the amazing thing in the article you linked is that bacteria colonies can solve complex mathematical problems at all. No one said they will be faster than other classical computers. If you like to read about this kind of problems: Many of Scott Aaronson's other post are about the limits of efficient computation. If you are interested especially in the limits of alternative approaches like protein folding, analog computing and anthropic computing I can recommend "NP-complete Problems and Physical Reality"[1]. [1] http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/npcomplete.pdf http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/npcomplete.pdf
- amelius 11y agoWell, thanks for the link, but I meant "faster" in the sense of being the first to provide a practical solution. By the way, I'm assuming that with bacterial computing, it (somehow) becomes simple to exponentially duplicate your computation building blocks.
- jholman 11y agoOnce the bacteria reach some limit of saturation, they can only multiply as fast as they can geographically spread to new area. If they have some maximum speed of physical spread, then that limits them to a maximum speed of n^2 in two dimensions, or n^3 in three dimensions. If you think they're going to keep up exponential growth long enough to make a difference, that implies that you think they'll spread faster and faster across the lab, like a bad movie.
- ourmandave 11y agoTo me, he's sending a huge message that science is valued, not denied. And it's inspiring, which I think is one of the PM's jobs. So what's the reporter's next question? "When will Canada start dropping quantum bombs on ISIL?" =(
- rybosome 11y ago> To me, he's sending a huge message that science is valued I find it surreal that such a thing needs to be done, as if science has not proven its worth time and time again, but here we are.
- justratsinacoat 11y agoGiven his direct political predecessor's attitude toward things like funding experimental reactors, or funding NSERC, or funding basic research, any message that validates science is a good and probably necessary one.
- James001 11y agoJesus... I was hoping atleast HN wouldn't give Trudeau a press blowjob. I'm from Canada and he is the most incompetent PM we've ever had. If you want to know what the future has for Canada with him as PM, look no further than the most indebted sub-sovereign in the world: Ontario. These guys are corrupt as fuck
- nibs 11y agoI agree as a fellow Canadian.
- wmoxam 11y ago> look no further than the most indebted sub-sovereign in the world: Ontario This isn't surprising, provinces are responsible for the largest share of public spending amongst the 3 levels of government in Canada https://www.quora.com/Why-has-Ontario-become-the-worlds-most-indebted-sub-sovereign-jurisdiction https://www.quora.com/Why-has-Ontario-become-the-worlds-most...
- JeremyBanks 11y agoI don't think you can reasonably make a assessment of "most incompetent prime minister ever" when he's been in office for less than six months.
- dang 11y agoYou can't comment like this here. Please (re-)read the site rules and follow them from now on. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html By the way, had we seen https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11312766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11312766 at the time we would have banned you for it. That one was worse than this one, because it added a personal attack on top of calling names. To continue commenting on HN you need to drop this approach altogether and make sure your comments are substantive and respectful, even to people and about positions you disagree with.
- James001 11y ago
- goblinking 11y agotrudeau just smoke weed all day and surf reddit... probably /r/atheist. of course he has some half arsed explanation about everything.
- joaorico 11y agoFor me the most interesting bit was Scott's "10 second" hypothetical reply to the reporter/general audience on what quantum computing is (found in one of his comments): "I say something about how a QC is a proposed device that would solve certain specific problems much faster than we know how to solve them today, by taking advantage of quantum mechanics, which generalizes the laws of classical probability. Then I talk about how you’d never talk about a -20% chance of rain tomorrow, but quantum mechanics is based on numbers called amplitudes, which can be positive or negative or even complex numbers. And how, if an event can happen one way with a positive amplitude and another way with a negative amplitude, the two possibilities can “interfere destructively” and cancel each other out, so that the event never happens at all. And how the state of a QC with (say) 1000 bits would have one amplitude for each of 21000 possible settings of the bits—an astronomical amount of information, if one wanted to write it down classically, for example in order to simulate what the QC was doing classically. But about how, when you measure the QC’s state, you just see a single random output (with its probability determined by its amplitude), not the gargantuan list of possibilities. And about how the goal, in QC, is always to choreograph things so that the possible paths leading to each wrong answer interfere destructively and cancel each other out, (say) some having positive amplitudes and others negative, whereas the paths leading to right answer reinforce. And how this is a very weird and specialized capability—it’s not nearly as simple as “trying all the answers in parallel” (if you did that, you’d simply observe a random answer), nor is it just a smaller or faster version of ordinary computing (a QC might even be “bigger” or “slower” than an ordinary one; all the hoped-for advantage comes from the QC’s ability to create interference patterns). Finally I talk about how a QC is known to give huge advantages over any known classical algorithm for a few tasks of practical importance (quantum simulation, breaking almost all the crypto used today…), and it might also give some advantages for broader goals like optimization and machine learning, but that’s an active research topic, and if the advantages exist they’ll probably be more modest and/or specialized."
- GuiA 11y agoJonathan Blow tweeted about this last night - I particularly agree with him about how everyone ridiculed the old politician who said the Internet was a "series of pipes", but here everyone is praising the young, hot Trudeau for his knowledge of quantum computing when really the two display a similar level of basic understanding about that subject. In any case, it's not about the politicians' knowledge - it's not Trudeau's job to know about QC - but how the public's . https://mobile.twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/721407108852232192 https://mobile.twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/721407108852...
- archgoon 11y agoWell, here's the original Steven's quote. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f99PcP0aFNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f99PcP0aFNE He was mocked more at the time for the email bit, namely the idea that the reason why he didn't get his email for 4 days was because of people streaming videos on the internet. However, it's not clear that he had a good understanding of the analogy himself (I'm sure that revisionists like Mr. Blow, who do understand how the internet work, can justify it, but it's not Mr. Blow's understanding that we're interested in here, as Mr. Blow is not proposing legislation to block Net Neutrality). In addition to the email bit, he seems to believe that the internet used to be a point to point communication network, whereas now the "industry wisely provided streaming, in effect, a kind of long distance, which is what we've got now". Given this, it's really not clear at all what "it's not a truck, it's a series of tubes" is supposed to clarify. Now, if Mr. Trudeau was using his understanding of Quantum Computing to justify a large government subsidy of DWave, there would be good cause to look at this throwaway quote in more detail.
- SilasX 11y ago>Given this, it's really not clear at all what "it's not a truck, it's a series of tubes" is supposed to clarify. I always assumed that was distinguishing between "quantized" and continuous network systems. That is, adding one more load to a truck ("just dump"ing something on it), one more person to a bus, doesn't make the roads any more congested, but trying to send one more gallon of water through a pipe system will slow it down or add to the queue length. The internet, then, is more like the latter, in that every piece of information carries some opportunity cost to sending, rather than being a bunch of trucks with spare, underutilized capacity.
- caiob 11y agoJealous much?
- rodergas 11y ago:)
- beloch 11y agoIn Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy the job of the galactic president, Zaphod Beeblebrox, is described as being "not to wield power but to draw attention away from it". Trudeau really reminds me of this quote quite a bit. In terms of traditional metrics of performance, Trudeau was heavily outclassed in leader debates during the last election. He demonstrated almost no ability to address questions directly and instead resorted to pre-rehearsed sound-bytes for nearly everything, often on topics not even tangentially related to what was being discussed. His inability to stay on topic actually let the encumbent PM off of particularly vicious hooks on more than one occasion. However, those sound-bytes sounded great when taken out of context and chopped up into bits for news broadcasts, even if they were somewhat baffling to the very few people who apparently tuned into the full debates and paid attention to how well answers addressed questions. That election probably lowered the bar for quality discourse in Canadian politics by quite a bit. Next election, everyone is going to be talking in sound-bytes. We might as well just have debates on twitter, you know, "because it's 2019" or whatever the year will be. Ever since the election, Trudeau hasn't stopped campaigning. Vogue photo spreads. Dining at the white-house. Touring the country. While the previous PM was almost a shut-in, Trudeau is tireless in his press appearances. It's almost as if somebody else is actually running the country and he's, well, distracting the public's eye. When pressed, Trudeau does have a tendency to promise the moon to just about anyone though. He's been racking up unfulfillable promises left, right, and center. No doubt he left Obama with some pretty wild promises too. This could eventually come crashing down on him but, for now, the honeymoon is still going pretty strong. Most Canadians love having a glamorous PM and the international attention that brings. Would HN be upvoting this story if it was Stephan Dion or Stephen Harper trying to teach QM?
- benzor 11y agoWhile I agree with your points about him debating more in sound bytes than in real answers... In fairness he's actually been doing reasonably well on his promises, as tracked by the TrudeauMetre[1]. Off the top of my head, unmuzzling scientists, restoring the long form census, and legalizing marijuana are all big contentious points that are either done or seriously underway. Given the abysmal promise-to-result ratio of typical politicians he's earned a passing grade in my books. []1 https://www.trudeaumetre.ca/ https://www.trudeaumetre.ca/
- trollingineeer 11y agoWhy is there always one attention-seeking person among the computer-using community that insists on evaluating those outside over things they say?
- verelo 11y agoI'm going to assume someone gave him notes prior to the interview and he read them so he would sound like he knew what he was on about. Having said that, I would pay for the comedic value of seeing GW Bush string that sentence together (even if someone else did prepare it for him).